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Adoption Story: Zooey Bee

Updated: Mar 21

A few years back, Zooey Bee (now Zoey) was brought up to Chicago from West Memphis. During her time with us, she landed a temporary foster home with a great family who also volunteered with us. That short-term help turned into a forever kind of love, and we couldn't ask for a happier ending! Read more about Zoey's adoption story from her mom, below...

"My husband Ryan and I fostered dogs while we were dating and engaged, but we decided we were ready to adopt when we got back from honeymoon. We had fostered with a few different organizations but stuck with ALIVE because they knew their dogs so well, and focused on how to set them up for success. The week we got back from our honeymoon, we emailed ALIVE and told them we would like to foster again, but we wanted to help them pull a dog from CACC because we had no other dogs, and we could be an ISO foster. ALIVE said "great! but we have a dog, 'Zooey Bee' who just needs a place to stay for the weekend".

I knew "Zooey Bee" from volunteering at The Little Barn and I like to think she chose me to be her mom. When I volunteered with her, she wouldn't leave my side, would nudge my hand when I stopped petting her, and would not let me give any other dogs attention. We said “Of course she can stay the weekend” - So she did, and then went back to her long term foster, Carolyn. We missed her! When ALIVE asked us if we could take her for another weekend when Carolyn was out of town, we were happy to welcome her back. "Zooey Bee" was going through heart-worm treatment and had to limit her activity, so we did a lot of nothing, snuggled all weekend, and fell in love with her. We made it official with ALIVE, and let her be our Zoey.

We spent the next few months taking it easy until Zoey was heartworm free. She was the most well behaved dog we had fostered, and we wondered if she even knew how to bark because she didn't make a sound...besides snoring! Fast forward a few months and when she was able to go for long walks, Zoey let us know loud and clear that anything that moved or made noise outside was very stressful for her. We could not make it half a block without her having a barking frenzy, pulling and jumping and causing a big embarrassing scene. What happened to our quiet girl?!

I grew up with our family dogs from breeders, but we felt so passionate about adopting, and wanted Zoey to be a great example of how adopting is the way to go. We were determined to help her learn the world was not as scary as she thought. ALIVE recommended a trainer and she nicknamed Zoey "crazy pants". We worked for months on getting her to watch us instead of reacting without any progress... until one day, a bike went by and Zoey looked at me instead of barking. I almost cried, I was so happy, and knew all our hard work was worth it. We were so so proud of her.

Adopting Zoey was the best decision we have ever made. She has inspired people we know to foster and adopt, made us hate fireworks, and we look forward to her welcome home party every night after work. We ask her all the time how a good girl like her was ever without a family to love her, or a couch to snooze on?! She has so much love to give and we make sure that every day she knows how much she is loved. Thank you ALIVE for taking a chance on our little Memphis, heart-worm positive, "crazy pants", mama who was forgotten. We are forever grateful."